Imaginary Cities

Imaginary Cities is a Canadian musical duo: Marti Sarbit and Rusty Matyas.
The two met, when Rusty did some mixing for the cover band called the Solutions in which Marit was playing at the time. Collaboration started when Rusty decided to write a song for Marti. An all-night writing session was a turning point and came up with a triumphant and soulful beginning – the track “Say You.”

The momentum they gained from the “Say You” session carried on through and the duo regularly spent 12 hours straight writing and working on a single song.

Rusty: If it was going well after a few hours, we would stay until we had a finished song to take home. There’s an energy and excitement on the day you’re writing and recording a new song that will almost guaranteed be absent if you come back to it another day.
 
Disovery of that energy was an ultimate push for the band in a direction of the full album. Marti’s stunning voice supported by Rusty original arrangements became the soul of the emmerging album.
“Say You” is the song that really got things started, but “Hummingbird” stands out as a key song on the album.

Marti: The day we started working on ‘Hummingbird’ Hummingbird we actually didn’t have a song in mind. Rusty just started playing a few chords and I realized that I had a song that sort of fit with it.

So the faith was smiling to the world back than as we got this masterpiece to listen...

Source - Imaginary Cities website: www.imaginarycities.ca

PS. Do not miss their European tour, especially this one - 21.03.2012, Munich, Ampere !!!

Daughter

Another stunning mystery - meet Daughter…

…this name hides a gorgeous singer/musician/songwrier - Elena Tonra.

Beauty has taken multiple dimensions in her world, reflecting itself in her music, poetry and simply…

in…herself.

So who is Daughter? Singer, songwriter, musician and… a graduate from the Professional Diploma in... Songwriting.Yeah, so shaking off the disbelief that such a faculty really exist-we have no other choice but to surrounder to the fact that she turned out to be a briliant student! Her music is simply irresistible and leaves a permanent mark on the listener…

Described by The Institute as…
 …an artist, Daughter tells tales of ghosts, drowning lovers and setting fire to her insides for fun. Her haunting voice and delicate guitar playing make her live performances spell-binding. She talks about unrequited love, lost hope and death… in the prettiest way imaginable.

If this is not enough for you to be convinced, try to listen to her EP His Young Heart.

Big thank you to Elena for your music and generosity of free streaming at bandcamp.com. 


Find more about  Daughter at her MySpace.

Jack James

Quite a mystery for me as a matter of fact. On Jacks website you will not find a tones of information, but you can read the most unusual Bio ever:

Bio 
Written by a friend 
------------------------- 

"I'm going to include this in the bio." 

"What?" 

"I think it'd be a good way of introducing you as a person." 

"It's a bit self indulgent..." 

"Only a bit." 

I've known Jack James for years now, we tried to convince Glasgow that you could play some rock music without some kind of personality gimmick. We figured out that you pretty much can't. That's the real problem here, I can't go on about how he was born on a farm and learned guitar from the music box and made his first guitar from a wooden fence and shoe string. Nor is Jack James from the hardest streets of Europe's knife crime capital Glasgow, always wishing to break away from blood covered stairwells. 

Jack James is a regular dude, he learned guitar as a kid because he liked listening to good music and wished to make his own. He plays music to work out his feelings on life, love and friends. His first album "Lights off, headphones on" should be taken as directions for correct usage. Using minimal takes, a guitar and a microphone, he delivers starkly honest and emotional views on a century hell bent on creating mass consumable irony, evoking parallels to musicians such as Neil Young and Bon Iver. 

"Thanks for doing this anyway, it's weird having people write about yourself." 

"No Problem." 

"But I'll probably change it anyway."

Does this intrigue you enough to keep exploring? Hope so! Just click play than.

Jack is another generous artist allowing us to listen to his albums online. Take time to explore this opportunity and be prepared to be affected...







...same way as we were, when we found Jack on bandcamp or others where, when Leaving Town went viral through the exposure of Reddit.

Visit Jack's website: jackjames.org

Mother Falcon

Another band not willing to be directly labelled by standard genres. Meet Mother Falcon and their unique mixture of old fashioned: strings, percussions and horns embracing modern sounds of sensible pop and folk. 

Their sound is one of its kind as well as the whole concept of the band. Under lead of Nick Gregg even more than twenty musicians can play during the show. But this number is variable as the Falcons find an organic connection with one another amid diverse schedules, and that keeps the ever-shifting lineup balanced. 

Till now they released two albums. Five track EP, Still Life...

...and the full twelve track album Alhambra.



It is a journey worth its time, so grab a coffee or tea and let yourself be drawn to the magic of this baroque pop.

And what is the story behind the name? Good one:

Nick Gregg: It was lunch time senior year and the band -- it used to be a rock band before it was this, for like two weeks -- but we tried to come up with a name and I heard about a version of the movie '300' that they tried to make into a children's version; so [he'll say] "Go to heck" and "Welcome to Caketown" or whatever. And they had tried to do the same family adaptation to the 'Die Hard' film with Bruce Willis. And they altered his line from "Yipee ki-yay motherfucker" to "Yipee ki-yay mother falcon."

Source: Mother Falcon Interview: SXSW 2010 

Find more about Mother Falcon: motherfalconmusic.com

Support them by buying their music: bandcamp.com, cdbaby.com.

mr. Gnome

Described by RollingStone to sound like: A spaced-out take on primal Midwestern post-punk. They tend to be labelled with such disturbing words as: schizophrenic, psychedelic, experimental... fortunately in the frame of the indie rock genre. So what can be more encouraging? I guess only the teaser to their latest album: Madness in Miniature.

Sounds like ethereal icelandic fairies being pummeled by concrete guitars in a dirty Cleveland parking lot.
AKA: awesome.

Nate Douglas - Paste Magazine

I hope, that this is enough for you to give it a try. Especially when they gave us the opportunity to listen to theiralbums for free. I really appreciate this as I don't like to buy a pig in a poke when it comes to music.



Find more about mr. Gnome: www.mrgnome.com

The Dø

The Dø is a French/Finnish indie pop duo: Olivia Merilahti  and Dan Levy.
This is quite interesting cultural  combination which adds even more flavor to two unique musicians.
Describing their music Merilahti says: "Our music is minimal and maximal noise pop - or at least that how I describe it today, tomorrow it might be different!"
They relate to the difficulties and strengths coming from the differences they have to face in the duo:
"Creative differences are crucial in an artistic relationship. We have to keep that, otherwise things get boring and unchallenging. They can lead to big fights, but we both have such opposed musical backgrounds that these differences are usually beneficial, enriching and complimentary." 
And they truly are!:

Interesting explanation for the band's name can be found in Wiki:

In a radio interview, Olivia Merilahti also stated that the name of the band refers to the Japanese Zen word Dō, meaning 'The Way'. Originally a translation of the Chinese word Tao, within the context of Zen it refers to the various active, expressive and creative methods an initiate can use to further their own understanding of Nondualism.

Find more about them: The Dø

Quotes from: The Culture Edit: The Dø

SoKo

As she describe herself as:

half folky / half punky
half french / half polish
half actress / half music-nerd
half singing / half talking
half dreaming / half dancing
half joking / half deep
half tearful / half crazy
half wise / half child
half orchestral / half lo-fi
half depressed / half joyful
half funny / half touching
half cat / half tiger
half sing along / half sing alone
totally wild
totally vegan
always unpredictable

She forgot to add incredible...

...and modest too.

Visit SoKo's MySpace for more: www.myspace.com/mysoko

Jon Gomm

Jon Gomm is an acoustic singer-songwriter with an incredible virtuoso guitar style, where he uses one acoustic guitar to create drum sounds, basslines and sparkling melodies all at the same time, combining styles from blues and jazz to rock and pop. The emphasis is still on the soulful vocals and songwriting however, and his original material is influenced by everything from Robert Johnson to Radiohead.

This short note comes from Jon Gomm's website and describes accurately what you can experience when you watch him.

Truly amazing, so hopefully we will be able to introduce his music to Quarterwave soon.

Find more about Jon Gomm here: jongomm.com

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